bhadella
* Ace Member *
What DG Club has the most active members? Our Charlotte DGC is big (over 500 tags for 2019) but wanted to know what other clubs have large membership bases and what kinds of activities they do for members. Peas and thanks!
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Biggest DG Club?
- Thread starter bhadella
- Start date
That's huge. Wow. What do you guys charge for membership out of curiosity?
SFDGC usually weighs in the upper 300's, maybe touching 400 by the end of the year. Membership dues are $40 (or we usually do $20 specials for the remainder of the year at The Safari, which is held in September).
SFDGC usually weighs in the upper 300's, maybe touching 400 by the end of the year. Membership dues are $40 (or we usually do $20 specials for the remainder of the year at The Safari, which is held in September).
bhadella
* Ace Member *
What % would you estimate is Juniors/Kids/Under 18?
We're kind of an "older" club, probably influenced greatly by the urban environment - we really only have a handful of kids with tags at most.
bhadella
* Ace Member *
We use DGU to track it.
https://www.discgolfunited.com/disc-golf-tournaments/event-detail.cfm/tourn_id/5895
Looks like 12 Children signed up out of 470 so far.
https://www.discgolfunited.com/disc-golf-tournaments/event-detail.cfm/tourn_id/5895
Looks like 12 Children signed up out of 470 so far.
erock216
Eagle Member
Basketcases in Illinois is big.
biscoe
* Ace Member *
NOVA is a much younger club but will wind up with around 400 members over the course of the year. Dues were $25 if i recall correctly.
I don't know how many are in the Rocket City Chain Gang (Huntsville, AL), but club memberships in northern Alabama seem to stay stagnant despite the fast growing city of Huntsville. wellsbranch250 would know better than I as he is an active member. There was a recent split with a new club being formed. Even I haven't joined this year. I'd guess around 100 for Rocket City Chain Gang and 20 for the new club?
SonicGuy
Banned
- Joined
- Oct 7, 2014
- Messages
- 1,827
The once mighty MFA has fallen on hard times lately. Only about 200 members it looks like. The MN disc scene is weird now, lots of different groups but no central identity. In the past we had a strong MFA and the Sundog league to bind the whole thing together.
bhadella
* Ace Member *
Sweet! Thanks for supporting the club! It honestly does go right back into the courses as upkeep, maintenance and then approvals.
Designjah
Newbie
Proud member of CDGC here! Thanks for everything you guys do. Looking forward to future improvements (& new courses...). I really need to volunteer a bit more... 
I am very much in awe of the plethora of courses that are worthy of at least monthly play in the QC. To also have the size/quality of club AND the space and course/facility bandwidth to have inter-city conflicting tournaments? Very cool.
I wonder how the older members of the club feel about "club culture" before/after growth. I imagine that must be difficult to maintain?
That must be like Emporia on steroids in terms of the penetration of disc golf in the local mainstream culture! Do you see other golfers outside of the course daily?
bhadella
* Ace Member *
That's a great question.
My perspective is a bit short sighted (only been involved since 2012) but I'll try to describe the dynamics of Charlotte.
Starting even in the late 80s/early 90's there was a big DG culture. We had a few cherished courses that were hand made, blood sweat and tears. The tournament scene grew and the club was able to run Worlds '97 which is a big event that brought together the team even closer. And continued to build a relationship with Innova East. The club continued to grow in scope and activity. Deciding to attempt the combined Pro/Am Worlds in 2012 was a herculian task. It was a bold proposal (adding up to 10 courses) and an amazing amount of work. And they pulled it off. At that time, people like me who had a casual relationship with DG (played for years and accidentally ran into the Brent Hambrick NT at my local course) found out about what the club did, volunteered at
Worlds and then were energized. The guys who carried to monstrous workload from 2012 were beat. A new wave of folks energized by 2012 pushed the club forward for a few years and then decided to run 2018. In comparison to 2012, 2018 was a breeze. We were able to finely sand some of the rough edges on courses and get more outside help to make 2018 less of a beast to work. The 2012 guys were more of the sage consultants/specialists that helped us along. Sometimes the relationships were frayed but afterwards regained some strength. And luckily the 2018 Worlds has energized another new set of people to help the club move forward. Between courses, events, membership, etc the club is hitting new peaks.
So long story short, each big milestone encouraged new people to be involved. And those who carried the club in prior stages took some time to accept the change but in time became confidants, champions and co-members with the new wave of cocksure, gung-ho youngins.
rusch_bag
* Ace Member *
My local club as two active members left.
The whole country is crazy on disc golf, while there is only around 5000 players in Finnish disc golf association SFL (all members of clubs are automatically members of SFL), with about half of that having PDGA license, there was big national free time survey last year, and based on that it was estimated that 49000 persons of age 15-74 play disc golf weekly and 235000 at least once year. That's roughly 1% and 5% of the population of Finland.
Locally the membership numbers fluctuate quite a bit, and new clubs are formed etc so now JyLi probably only has something like 200 or so members (I have moved few years ago so I don't know the current situation particularly well).
Wow, it's fascinating that adding those feathers in the cap created significant enough momentum to capitalize on. I guess that shouldn't be a surprise if you study human nature, but it sure dents the commonly held cultural belief as far as how to properly grow the scene. I feel like while our numbers are growing, our culture is still "niche" and not widespread, so the common mentality of "if you build it, they will come" is not nearly as ironclad as it is presented to be.
I'm running the SF Safari this year, which will be an A-tier for the first time ever. Sean Jack has now run two DGPT events at the next nearest course for us (Gleneagles), and the club is in the spotlight with local companies because of the events that it is either hosting or assisting...so your perspective kinda puts into a new light what the possibilities are when you continue to add to the plumage. It also tells me I should open my mind to the possibility that important members of the team could be from the less expected and less experienced parts of the club, since there may be people that want to help and are awaiting the opportunity.
bhadella
* Ace Member *
The other major impact on the clubs growth IMO is the robust league schedule driving competitive DG and a lot of the visibility of the club.
We currently have:
Monday - Womens Only League and Glow Random Dubs
Tuesday - Random Dubs and Putting League (seasonal)
Wednesday - PDGA Singles (just starting) and Team Match Play series (seasonal)
Thursday - Handicap Singles
Friday - Open
Saturday - Handicap Singles
Sunday - Handicap Singles, Random Dubs and another Random Dubs
Our next hurdle is rebuilding our weekend PDGA tournament TD base up. The vast majority of our league TDs are players first, TDs second so most are not looking to run bigger weekends events.
nrihan
Eagle Member
Biggest? Not worried about size. One of the coolest clubs in the country is Par Infinity in Humboldt, however.
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